Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who Is the Most Central of Them All?

Abstract

In academia, informal collaboration is an integral element in the production of knowledge. We construct the social network of informal collaboration using acknowledgments of 2782 scholarly articles published in six journals in financial economics. We rank financial economists according to their centrality in the social network of informal collaboration and find that central commenters are not necessarily the most central or the most productive authors. We explore the determinants of high centrality rankings using detailed CV data for the most central academics. A PhD from a better ranked department is associated with a better centrality ranking. Seniority is associated with worse rankings, albeit at a decreasing rate.